Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLJ meetup. Today we're going to have a really inspiring session. And for that, we're going to be flying all the way to Greenwich, Connecticut, to have with us Douglas Banderhorn. He's the founder and architect of Banderhorn Architecture.
There you go, Douglas. What's going on, my friend? Good morning, Elborough. How are you?
Good morning. Are we marching today? Huh? What's up?
I don't know, maybe. You have a good case. That was the memo, right? You got it.
Good. No, I love the background, by the way. How many did you read all of them? Oh, you know what?
I referenced all of them. They're part of the architecture collection. Look, that's what makes your projects so unique, because your bringing inspiration to all these new designs and renovations. And I got to say, having the architect and the founder of Banderhorn Architecture is very incredible, as one of our guests in this SLJ meetup series.
So I wanted to ask you and start off by saying, first of all, thank you for being here today. And to tell us a little bit about yourself. Oh, well, I grew up in the building business. My father was a builder.
And I started out in the trades, working around the construction sites. And then I got jobs doing framing and working in a cabinet shop. And then I decided to go to architecture school. So I went to Penn State.
And after graduating, I got an apprenticeship like every other architect. But I ended up in a really nice place. I ended up getting my first job in Greenwich, Connecticut. And for those that are not familiar with it, it's a very special community.
It's got a lot of beautiful homes, hundreds and hundreds of beautiful homes. And I learned a lot about different styles, because there's so many styles here. I learned to add to those homes without really being noticed, and in terms of the intervention. So I wanted to just kind of blend in with those.
But then after about four years working for someone else, I started my own practice. And it's been over 30 years since I started doing that. And now we've built a great reputation of designing classic homes, of all different styles for a broad variety of plants. And now we're moving out from Greenwich.
We're in about four or five states now. Well, I got to say, those 30 years of overnight success really paid off. Yes, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Tell us a little bit about what specific projects you work on.
Because I've seen you getting all these awards now, and it's impressive. Yeah. Well, people come to us for a classic design for the most part. They want something that's going to fit into these really fine neighborhoods.
They may have a conception of what they want in terms of design or style, but we work with them individually to come up with what we're after. And we do make our homes look like they've been there for a long time for the most part. We want them to look like they're part of the neighborhood, part of Greenwich. But we do turn them upside down in that the floor plans tend to be more contemporary.
The backs of our homes tend to be more contemporary in terms of the light and number of windows. The features are much different from the older homes. So despite driving up to one and saying, wow, this house has been here for a hundred years, once you go inside, you realize that that's not necessarily true. So what kind of clientele do you have?
Is it like a specific demographic? A lot of our clientele tends to be successful business people, a lot of Wall Street people, entrepreneurs. What we do is quite special. It's not inexpensive to create a classic home.
So we're lucky enough to work with a lot of very successful people. Price range of those properties. Price range. Oh, gosh.
Now you get specific. These projects can be a glorious pool house for $500,000 to an unbelievable mansion for $20 million. Is it craziest or trendiest feature that people are requesting you? I think that probably the connection of the indoor to the outdoor spaces is bringing on a lot of folding glass walls.
That's probably one of the hot new items. People want to really connect between the indoors and the outdoors. So that's very trendy. A lot of people were home for COVID, worked from home state at home all day.
So invested in a lot of features for their home. Recreation features, indoor pools, golf simulators, large home gyms, theaters, etc. So that's probably some of the latest things. Cool.
Now, tennis courts, the people's tennis courts. We don't do too many tennis courts. A lot of people here belong to the clubs. We used to do more of them.
But I think tennis is a very social thing. But I don't encourage people to do that. I don't think they get as much use as if they just go to the club and hang out with their friends. Are these people that are requesting these properties are for sale to live?
Investment? Are those second homes? We don't do too much work with builders or speculative work. I mean, occasionally.
The price point of that is different from our market. They tend to be primary residences and second home residences. So the homes that we're doing on the ocean in Rhode Island, those are second homes. The size of most people's primary homes are even bigger.
But locally in Greenwich, there's often private homes. What's something that in Greenwich has been going on or that you might face that is important for potential owners to know? Yeah. We are very blessed to live in a place where we don't get bad hurricanes.
We don't get earthquakes. We don't have wildfires. This part of Connecticut is pretty boring in terms of weather, which I think we're all very thankful for. I don't think we do anything special in terms of protection.
We use high quality materials. The building codes protect the homes from excessive fire and things like that as it is. We're not doing anything important because we don't have any imminent threats that I know of. Now, your career, 30 years plus, I'm sure a lot of things have happened.
What's been the hardest thing that you've had to face and what did you learn from it? Oh, gosh. The hardest thing for sure is running a small business. Running a small business is challenging in so many ways.
It's about getting the work. It's about providing a great environment for people to work in. It's about staffing. It's about dealing with cyclical things.
The economy has a tremendous effect on architecture and small business in general, but architecture especially because some people are watching their pocketbook. They're not necessarily building a new home or a second home or we fall back to remodeling projects if we need to. We haven't been doing that lately, that's for sure. We're very busy.
Running a small business is a real challenge. Then it's such serious work in a way, but yet you want to somehow still stay creative and light and have a good time. We've been lucky to achieve that balance. I think we've got such a great staff right now and I think everybody.
We're firing at all cylinders and we have a great team dynamic right now. One thing that we do and I think this is probably a long-term trend is that we have remote Fridays. Everyone got used to working from home. I said, since we're all back in the office but everybody really likes that, why don't we take one day a week and everybody can work from home.
I think that's good for morale. It's good for the workplace. It's about adapt to the new times and create energy and environment. Life balance is such an important thing for people now and it's good when business responds to that.
Absolutely. I'm sure that this is going to also carry momentum for not only have you in the former state but in the entire country and internationally. Any plans of expanding outside of the state? Oh gosh.
We've only done one project outside of the state. That was in Copenhagen. Oh wow. Going to do that.
I think so. That went great. Interestingly, it was a family that lived in a historic home, a very important home in the town. They wanted to do a garage and pool house and they wanted it to look like it went with the home.
It was done in the 1700s, late 1700s when the home was built and none of the local architects really could respond to that. They were modernists and only trained as modernists. So this client who happened to have a home in Greenwich that we had worked on said, would you do this project for us? And I said, of course.
But they're all to the rescue. Off we went to Benet. Amazing. Well, the word luxury.
What does he mean to you? Well, I think luxury, it means different things to different people. For me, luxury is great design. It's high quality materials, superior materials and terrific craftsmanship.
If you can combine great design, quality materials and beautiful craftsmanship, that's true luxury to me. It's not gold leaf. It's something. I love that.
No, amazing. I will say from my personal view that what you do is very luxurious. Like create that classic, yet high end designs and home systems make levels. So congratulations.
Main takeaway from everything you've learned over the years. What's something that you did that you're like, wow, this is really helpful. Main takeaway probably, you know, God is in the details. I think, you know, our work is, there's a lot of people trying to do what we do.
But I think what sets us apart is the level of detail. We design every bracket and in some cases lighting and hardware and have that custom made. Iron work for the stair railings and, you know, the paneling and the cabinetry and all of the exterior details. You know, styles vary.
We go from Tudor to French to Georgian to shingle style. We're doing a lot of shingle styles because of all the waterfront work. But it's the details that I think the work is about. And that's what I think is the takeaway from what we do.
I love it. So ensuring that we pay attention to the details. That will make the difference. 100%.
Wonderful. Well, I know you're busy. I know you have a lot of things going on. So I wanted to wrap this up.
We should do well. And obviously by thanking everybody that was tuning in either now or later watching this, make sure to follow Vanderhorn Architects and obviously Douglas leading the pack, making sure that we keep on getting inspired daily by everything that you do. Anything that you want to share or add to the top? I just want to thank you for giving us a call, letting us participate in your program.
It's a great show. Maybe we can do it again sometime. Absolutely. And I would love to go visit some of your properties.
Maybe we can create some cool content there. Sure. I'll come down to Miami. Let's do it.
Alright, Douglas. It's starting to get cold. Yeah, exactly. Listen, you want to start playing pickable?
I don't think that's going to be this far. You come in here. So I'll play it again. Okay.
Great. Alright. Take care. Thank you.
Bye bye. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace it's beautiful success in life.
My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time. Bye.